Q: I just took some vacation videos for the first time with my Canon s90.  The videos won't work in Aperture. The screen is black, and I get no play options at all.  And the files totally jam up Aperture.  These are 3 min max, and software current.  Ideas?

See this Support Article for the list of supported Video formats:

Aperture 3: About Video and Audio formats in Aperture http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4025

For the Canon S90 these formats, size, and frame rate should work:

There are some known problems with playing videos in Aperture:

• Do have other, conflicting video codecs installed? Is your signature current? If you are running Lion with Aperture 3 remove the 3ivx Video Codec:

Aperture 3 Will Not Play Videos if Lion is Installed and 3ivx Video :

http://aperture.maccreate.com/2011/08/25/aperture-3-will-not-play-videos-if-lion -is-installed-and-3ivx-video-codec-is-installed/

• Also, is your library referenced or managed? If you use a referenced Library and the videos are located in a shared folder, then Aperture will problems to access the video and to play it. In that  case you need tomove them to a different folder on import: https://discussions.apple.com/message/17138620#17138620

Regards

Léonie

Odd. I have video from both a Canon S90 and the new S100 and both work fine. Note that the S100 is 1080 while the S90 is VGA.

Do they play okay in other apps?

iPhoto?

QuickTime?

iTunes?